My Husband Let The Village Punish Me Chapter 05

My Husband Let The Village Punish Me Chapter 05

The crowd erupted.

“That isn’t Tessa!”

“Isn’t that Lila Bennett, the woman who supposedly threw herself into the ocean three years ago?”

The woman lying on the ground, barely alive, really was Lila.

Her face was covered in blood, her lips had turned blue, and her eyes were barely open. Her breathing was so faint that it could stop at any moment.

Caleb lost all composure.

He quickly yanked the blood-soaked gag from her mouth. When it came free, blood poured from between her lips.

He gathered Lila into his arms, trembling violently.

“Lila! Lila, wake up!”

He screamed himself hoarse, but she did not respond.

Only the faintest rise and fall of her chest proved that she was still alive.

“Doctor! Someone get the doctor!”

Greyhaven’s elders always kept a local doctor on site during the Blessing.

Dr. Martin Lewis immediately rushed forward to examine her.

“She’s in critical condition. She needs to be taken to the county medical center immediately.”

Caleb shouted at Nate, “Get the truck!”

Nate finally snapped out of his shock.

“Right.”

Caleb had just lifted Lila into his arms when two people pushed their way through the crowd.

“Wait!”

Lila’s adoptive parents had arrived.

Caleb’s stomach dropped.

This was bad.

Lila’s adoptive father strode forward with a furious expression and clamped a tattooed hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

“What is Lila doing here? She’s alive? What the hell is going on?”

Her adoptive mother planted her hands on her hips.

“You’re not going anywhere until you explain this.”

Caleb grew frantic.

“I’ll explain everything later. We need to get her to the hospital now, or she’s going to die.”

“She should have died three years ago,” Lila’s adoptive mother said without a trace of concern.

“If she has suddenly turned up in Greyhaven again, then you must be behind it.”

Her adoptive father grabbed Caleb by the collar.

“Did you take her away? Did the two of you really think you could deceive us?”

Caleb’s parents were clearly stunned. They had known nothing about any of this.

They hurried forward.

“Let’s talk this through. There’s no need to get violent. Maybe there’s been some misunderstanding.”

“Go fuck yourself!”

Lila’s adoptive father shoved Caleb’s father aside.

“We raised that girl for twenty years, and then she supposedly threw herself into the ocean over your son. I hadn’t even settled that score yet.”

“I thought she was the only one pining after your son, but it turns out the two of them staged her death so she could run away. This is all your precious son’s doing. He married one woman and helped another disappear!”

He hauled Caleb upward by his collar.

“Talk! If you don’t explain everything, I swear I’ll make you pay!”

Nate had already brought the truck around.

“Get her in! Stop wasting time!”

Caleb had no choice but to give in.

“Fine. I’ll tell you!”

“But you have to let us take Lila to the hospital first.”

“She finally came back. You didn’t raise her all those years just to let her die now.”

Lila’s adoptive parents exchanged a calculating look.

“Fine.”

Nate and several others loaded Lila into the truck and rushed her to the county medical center.

Caleb stayed behind.

He collapsed onto the ground and told Lila’s adoptive parents the full truth about what had happened three years earlier.

Understanding dawned on their faces, followed almost immediately by outrage.

“I knew you were behind it,” her adoptive father snarled. “My daughter had a perfectly good marriage lined up, and you ruined it.”

“Richard Dalton offered us a hundred thousand dollars to secure that marriage. A hundred thousand!”

“You owe us that money. Every penny of it!”

Caleb tried to break free of his grip but was not strong enough.

His own anger finally exploded.

“What kind of parents treat their daughter like a paycheck?”

“Lila didn’t want to marry him. You drove her to fake her death and run away!”

“Bullshit!”

Lila’s adoptive mother slapped him across the face.

“We treated her like a paycheck? She was the greedy one.”

“You think she wanted to marry you? She thought you were poor and didn’t want a life with you.”

Caleb’s eyes turned bloodshot.

“That’s impossible!”

“If money was all she cared about, why didn’t she marry Richard? You’re lying to me!”

Her adoptive father gave a contemptuous snort.

“Because Lila wanted more. A hundred thousand dollars wasn’t enough for her.”

“She wanted to leave Greyhaven and find someone even richer. She cut us out of her life because she didn’t want anyone knowing where she came from and ruining her chances of marrying into serious money.”

Caleb shook his head, refusing to believe him.

“That’s not true. You’re lying!”

“Lila has always been chasing her dreams. She’s independent and self-reliant. She isn’t the kind of person you’re describing!”

At that moment, Caleb’s phone rang.

Nate was calling.

“Caleb, Lila’s in surgery.”

“The doctors said her injuries were too severe. They couldn’t save the baby.”

Caleb’s mind went blank.

“What? She was pregnant?”

“Yeah. She was three months along.”

“She’s still unconscious. We don’t know how she’s doing yet.”

Nate continued speaking, but Caleb could no longer process his words.

Lila had been three months pregnant.

Three months earlier, she had told Caleb, “I’m heading into the mountains for a photo shoot. Cell service may be spotty, so I’ll contact you when I come back.”

An entire week passed before she called him again.

She had sounded excited and talked without stopping.

“I got some incredible shots. I’ve already submitted a set to National Geographic. I really hope they select them.”

She and Caleb had stayed in constant contact for all three years.

But Lila had never once mentioned having a boyfriend.

She had certainly never told him that she was pregnant.

A helpless sense of betrayal washed over Caleb. For the first time, he realized that he might not know Lila as well as he had thought.

A moment later, Caleb finally came to his senses.

“Where did Tessa go?”

A bucket hat and camera lay abandoned on the ground at the edge of the lot.

Caleb picked up the camera and pulled up the photographs.

The photographs were quite good.

The final images were especially powerful, capturing Lila crumpled on the ground, barely alive and unable to move.

Caleb scanned the area.

At last, his gaze settled on an open patch of ground in the distance.

I stood there in silence, watching him.